Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1903 — THE AMERICAN HEN A GREAT MONEY MAKER. [ARTICLE]

THE AMERICAN HEN A GREAT MONEY MAKER.

Perry S. Heath, another Indiana republican politician, secretary of the republican national committee and erstwhile first assistant postmaster general, seems to have been responsible for a great deal of the rotten condition of affairs in the postoffice department. It is not to be wondered that the word has gone out at Washington that no more Indiana republicans need apply for “sits” in the P. O. department. Such a record has never before been equaled by any state as that made by the Indiana attaches.

It is really amusing to read in the republican newspapers’ editorials (all of which are carefnlly edited and prepared by the republican national editorial bureau) that the trusts are opposed to the nomination of Roosevelt for the presidency. What in the name of Mark Hanna have the trusts to fear from Roosevelt? What has he done that should array the 4 captains of industry” against him? All this stuff is pure buncombe, sent out by the editorial bureau to line up the farmers and laboring classes for the very man above all others whom the trusts want to bead the next presidential ticket.

Superintendent Rathbone of the middle division rural delivery, has recieved an order from Washington which will increase the difficulty of securing the establishment of rural mail routes in Indiana. Under the new order every rural mail route must supply 100 families, and at least one member of every family must be able to read and write. In northwest section of the state, where land is owned in large tracts.it will be difficult to secure rural mail service under this order. Heretofore there has been a good deal of laxity with reference to the number of families, and the new order will be strictly enforced.

A new republic may be the outgrowth of the proposition of th e United States to construct the Panama Canal. Reports from Bogota, believed to be reliable, are to the effect that the inhabit ints of the states of Panama and Cauca are unanimously in favor of the ratification of the treaty and that if their insistence on this point is disregarded by the Colombian congress they will secede. These two states are the ones that would profit most by the construction of the canal. They are almost entirely shut off from the rest of Colombia by a mountain chain and in view of the impoverished condition of the Colombian treasury it is not believed that the mother country could efifect’l v oppose secession. The two •'"ld together make a ‘'♦an Costa Rica, ' *250,000

George Fayette Thompson, of the Agricultural Department, has written a treatise upon the modern lien which contains information 6f interest. In the first place Mr. Thompson declares that the average get-rich-quick concern stands in about the same relation to an up-to-date hen as does an ice wagon to an automobile. As a rapid accumulator of financial resources the hen is in the same class as oil wells and gold mines. The thoroughly modern hen no longer wastes her time hatching eggs. She leaves that work entirely to the incubator while she devotes the time thus gained to the more profitable labor of producing eggs. Consequently, Professor Thompson has discovered there is proportionately a fewer number of fowls, but by the adoption of labor and time-saving machines the lesser number has been able to produce a constantly increasing output of eggs. The treatise tains so much interesting information about the hen and her product that Secretary Wilson has determined to incorporate it in the forthcoming year book of the Department of Agriculture. Professor Thompson, who is also a statistician of reputation, has discovered that in the city of New York eaoh family of five persons consumes on an average four eggs a day. In Chicago, if it is accepted that the city has reached a population of 2,000,000, the ratio of egg consuming is higher and every person in the city manages to consume one whole egg each day in the year. The production of poultry and eggs is the most profitable of all industries. Mr. Thompson estimates that a thoroughly modernized hen can realize 400 per cent profit for her owner. In thirty-three States and Territories the value of eggs exceeds the value of the poultry Product, The egg product in the Jnited States amounts to more when measured by dollars and cents, than the combined gold and silver production. This does not take the poultry into account at all. The value of the combined poultry and egg product would be nearly doable that of the precious metals. The value of the industry is just six times that of the wool product. Still, eggs have taken only an inconspicuous place in tariff debates. Protectionists and tariff reformers are in a perpetual row over wool, but the hen makes no clamor for protection from Congress. Neither has there been any protest against the introduction of machinery. Prices did not fall with the introduction of the incubator. Instead, the poultry raisers of the country devoted themselves to the education of the hen, so that she would lay eggs during the time the old-fashioned fowls spent in sitting and tending to her brood of chickens.

The grand total value of the annual output of eggs is now $146,000,000, while that of poultry aggregates $189,000,000. lowa leads the States in the production of eggs, the yearly product of that state being 100,000,000 dozens. Ohio comes next with 91, 000,000 dozens, Illinois is third with 86,000,000 dozen and Missouri fourth with 85,000,000 dozen. With the exception of Alaska and Hawaii, Montana pays the highest price for eggs, the average ¥nce being 20 cents a dozen. 'hey are cheapest in Texas, where the average price last year was 74 cents a dozen. The average price for the 16,000,000 eggs wnich were .marketed in the United States last year waa 11.15 cents a dozen. Professor Thompson resorts to the railway illustration as a means of impressing upon the mind the enormous proportions of the egg industry. The annual output fills 43,127,272 crates, holding thirty dozen each. An ordinary refrig-

erator car, which has an average length of 42.5 feet, holds 400 crates. He maintains that a train of these care sufficient to carry the annual product would be 866 miles long, or long enough to reach from Washington to Chicago and have several miles to spare. In closing, Professor Thompson says: “The majority of the fowls of this county are found in comparatively small numbers on a very large number of farms, where they gather their own subsistence and receive practically no care. The consequence of this is that eggs are produced at little cost. The development of this industry to an extent incredibly larger than it is at the present time is among the easy possibilities.”